Nutrition by design: a review of biotechnology in functional food

Background: Medical institutions in industrial and developing countries are increasingly turning to functional foods as intervention in chronic disease. Advances in genetic engineering have provided methods of purposefully designing functional foods and bioactive compound-producing organisms. This literature review examines the recent history of biotechnological applications in functional food, the state of bioagricultural engineering for high-value compound production, and the challenges that developers face in promulgating functional foods from biotechnological sources. Based on the literature reviewed, it is predicted that adding biotechnologically-produced compounds will be more successful in producing novel functional foods.Keywords: Biotechnology; functional food; genetic engineering, golden rice, algae